20 July 2010, 4:14

Hello,

first take my apologies if the problem i am going to describe was already discussed somewhere. I am using Mahara since beginning of 2010. Right now we are using version 1.2.4.

Our platform is Windows 2003 server, PostgreSQL, IIS+PHP version 5.2.11. I know Windows is not officially supported, but i succesfully managed to get Mahara up and running - except for one issue.

Issue:

When i try to set up the From: To: fields in the Edit Access screen, i can pick up the values from calendar and hit Save button, but entered date/time value just disapears every time i hit the Save.

See screenshot

It's not saved correctly at all. No error message on the webpage also no entry in the PHP error_log file.

Another side-effect is that every topic is missing the date/time value within date/timestamp.

See screenshost

It shows only strings like Fri, 16 Jul 2010, <blank>:11 AM or when it's today's topic only <blank><blank>:01 AM is displayed.

I don't know if it's related to different format of the PHP strftime function (i read about some windows-only workaround in the Mahara sources).

Thanks for any help

Adrian

20 July 2010, 5:10

Dear Adrian,

I could not reproduce your first issue with my Mahara 1.2.5 installation, so that seems be fixed already.

AFAIK the second issue does also not occur in 1.2.5. So maybe you consider updating to the latest version.

Cheers

  Juergen

20 July 2010, 6:08

Hello Jürgen,

thanks for a quick reply. So i crossed my fingers and started upgrading into 1.2.5 version.

Aside from "Your server does not have the mime_magic extension enabled. Mahara may have trouble detecting file types" error message - which i was (fortunately) able to overcome just by allowing mime_magic extension.dll in PHP.ini file and restarting IIS - upgrade process was successful!

Unfortunately the problem with date is still there.

Edit Access window still rejects any entered values and topics in the forum are still missing parts of the date/timestamp. I suppose that correct behavior is that entered values are still displayed on the Edit Access page, even after Save button was used.

Is there something (debug output, test page) i can provide you with to be able to help me out? (as you wrote that you could not reproduce the issue).

Maybe it's related with some time settings in PHP or windows platform itself.

Adrian

20 July 2010, 7:07

Sorry Adrian,

but I'm also new to Mahara and very busy at the moment. But maybe someone else can help you. Hope you get your problem fixed.

Cheers

   Juergen

20 July 2010, 18:31

Hi Adrian,

If you are able to run your tests on a test database (not your production site), what would be really useful to us is if you could try with the latest 1.3.0 beta:

  https://launchpad.net/mahara/+milestone/1.3.0beta2

We're currently working hard on fixing bugs on that version of Mahara which we are hoping to release in early August.

So if you can reproduce that bug on 1.3.0 beta2, please feel free to file a bug (the screenshots you provided are very helpful) on the tracker:

  https://bugs.launchpad.net/mahara/+filebug

Cheers,

Francois

21 July 2010, 3:38

Hello François,

so i had installed 1.3.0beta2 on our test site. I was prepared to test out our problem with View- Edit Access and missing timestamp in forum topics is still there.

But when i tried to Create a group (to be able to create a discussion forum) i encoutered serious problem:

Mahara: Site unavailable
A nonrecoverable error occured. This probably means you have encountered a bug in the system

Please see PHP error log file --> http://rccv.vsb.cz/cd/mahara/mahara1.3beta_creategroup_error_PHPerrorlog.txt

Also when i had created new View, Edit Access screen still worked same way as in 1.2.5. version i.e. From: and To: dates can be selected but are not saved properly using Save button.

Regarding the problem with Edit Access and date/timestamp, IMHO main problem lies within 'strftime' function and parameters (%e, etc.) which are supported under windows environment. I have noticed (in langconfig.php) definitions like strftimedatetimeshort and few others. Those strings seems to be used to parse/construct the date in the forum topics and in the Edit Access screen. IIRC correctly strftime just returns null or true/false if it's used with invalid(unsupported) parameter.

Adrian

21 July 2010, 17:23

Hi Adrian,

I'm afraid that bug you got in 1.3.0b2 when creating a group, or changing view access is my fault, you can see more here:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/mahara/+bug/607647

It will be fixed in the next release.  In the meantime, if you want to install a fixed version you can generate a new tarball from the latest code with this link:

http://gitorious.org/mahara/mahara/archive-tarball/master

Richard.

22 July 2010, 7:00

Hello Richard,

i really appreciate your fast reply. I have to say that so far Mahara comunity was definitely very helpful. Enough of flattery

From history of bug #607647 i understood that the Create Group error applies only to freshly installed Mahara (or after 1 July).

But i still don't understand how it's related with "changed view access are not saved properly" and "datestamp in forum topic is missing some string" problems. Those problems were already present in previous versions of our Mahara installations (before being upgraded up to 1.2.5).

So i think it has to do something with platform (windows, strftime function) or other setting (PostgreSQL database encoding?) we are using.

Can you, please, be more specific on that?

Thanks in advance

Adrian

22 July 2010, 17:56

Adrian,

That's right, it's a completely different bug.  But I thought I'd better point the fix out to you so that you can concentrate on the view access date bug without that other bug getting in the way.

It's quite likely that the date bug only occurs with your OS and Web server; I do know that the php strptime function used in that file (htdocs/view/access.php) is not available on Windows and there is a workaround in that file.

We don't have Windows or IIS here, so we can't reproduce your problem.  However, it's definitely a good idea to file a bug report for it, and if you are able to do a bit of debugging yourself and you can come up with a fix, you can post a patch to the tracker.  We'll happily apply it for the next release.

R.

31 July 2010, 17:48

Guy's - I too aologize if I have mistaken the issue here - and it is discussed elsewhere.

Adrian - Are you still having this problem hitting save on view access and the dates not being correctly updated - allowing others to see a certain view?

I am having the exact same issue when trying to give access to members.  Members are not able to then look at a view I have created for them. Oddly when giving access to members of a group the view doesn't seem to require access dates - so members of groups are able to access views.

I am using  Mahara 1.2.5, on CentOS Linux 5.5, with PHP 5.  I have started a deep dive into the code and have noticed some JSON code function ->  makeCalendarInput - makecalendarLink ... I suspect to be related to issue. 

I still looking into this.  If someone has solution please update me.  Somehow I can't believe this has not come up before.  since giving members access to view is some core functionality.  I'll update if I find a solution.